It’s been nearly three weeks since the tragedy in West, but the damage to its residents and rescuers is far from done.

West paramedic Bryce Reed helped victims escape from the April 17 explosion that killed his closest friend and destroyed his home. He has attended funeral after funeral for his fellow first responders and helped neighbors salvage bits and pieces of their homes.

But now the 31-year-old is buried under the rubble of the painful memories, stress and shock.

Reed has a savior, though, and so do other men and women whose careers call them to disasters where they witness human suffering and trauma. In an effort to minimize these first responders’ mental and emotional anguish, dozens of volunteer psychologists and chaplains set up their services in Central Texas during the weeks following the explosion.

“They’re rescuing the rescuers,” said Reed, who has had a few informal sessions with a volunteer psychologist and a chaplain. “They’re really walking through hell with us to help us get to the other side.”

After catastrophic events, first responders experience typical human grief and shock, experts say. And while most have flexed their emotional muscles to cope, some can’t on their own.

“They’re very proud of their work and what they do,” said Sara Dolan a psychology and neuroscience professor at Baylor University. She has been working to help Reed manage his grief. “But they’re struggling with guilt because their job is to control chaos, and some of them were not able to accomplish that mission.”

Open to help

Dolan is one of many psychologists, social workers and chaplains who have responded to the mental and emotional needs of the first responders and the survivors of the West disaster.

Research following tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina showed that more first responders accept help than in past decades. The abundant availability of that assistance, from the day disaster strikes to months later, keeps the first responders healthy and stable as they continue their careers.

People “who are extraordinarily hearty are saying, ‘I’m not feeling so hearty right now,’” said Suzy Gulliver, a researcher for Scott & White Healthcare in Central Texas and professor of psychiatry at Texas A&M Health Science Center.

Fire departments, law enforcement agencies and health departments now include mental health professionals on their staff or consult with them, thanks to the public and professional consciousness that such traumatic jobs can yield to emotional instability.

The field has also ensured that first responders are educated about taking care of their mental health the same way they’re trained to rescue and treat others, Gulliver said. Agencies are creating barrier-free services that follow up with the emergency workers months or even years after the initial counseling.

In Texas, the Critical Incident Stress Management network is made up of chaplains and specially trained first responders who can guide emergency workers through the trauma immediately after a disaster.

All a blur

Reed said that he and his surviving “brothers,” who assisted with search and rescue efforts, debriefed with this kind of team, telling their stories of what they saw, heard, felt and smelled.

Dolan said this is an important first step in the healing process, the triage that allows each man and woman to vent and knit together their stories to gain a big-picture perspective of what happened.

Reed said he told his brothers that on the evening of April 17, he had been sitting at home with his wife, a nurse, when they heard about a fire at the plant.

The two drove through the area, urging people to evacuate apartments, knowing that the burning chemicals there could make residents sick. Avoiding the toxic plume, they drove to the plant and saw ambulances had responded. He saw a truck there belonging to Cyrus Reed - his brother in every sense of the word except “by blood” and a firefighter for the Abbott Volunteer Fire Department. They were best friends and shared a name but were not related.

They drove away to continue the informal evacuation and 10 seconds later, they felt the boom.

“I knew this was going to be a mass casualty,” he said. In the chaos after, his wife disappeared, trying to triage any of the injured.

He doubled back to the plant to assist in searching for and treating any survivors, he said, and then assumed command on the radio when he realized his superiors died in the explosion.

He talked an injured first responder out of the rubble, who informed him that “my brother, Cy was dead,” he said. His wife, he later learned, was OK.

The rest is a blur.

Slowly improving

Last week, Reed drove around his small town. He saw his place of work was destroyed, his friends’ houses were leveled — all the sadness, reminders of everything he lost surrounded him.

He said he has been feeling like he’s been “screaming underwater” and was not coping well.

“But there are counselors everywhere,” Reed said.

Dolan and Coppell chaplain Steven Calvert have been his particular comforters.

“I’ve improved by leaps and bounds,” he said. “They, honest to God, want to understand what’s going on. Sara didn’t ask me how Cy’s funeral went. She attended. She wanted to walk with me underground through the hurt so that she could help me out of it.”

Disasters that have a tremendous impact on the identity of a town will change many of the individual responders, according to Dr. Carol North, a psychiatry professor at UT Southwestern and director of the Program in Trauma and Disaster at the VA North Texas Health Care System. She said a few first responders may even develop psychiatric illnesses like post traumatic stress disorder.

“Not everyone will become permanently damaged,” North said. “Some will feel like they’re stronger, better people. But they’ll be permanently changed.”

Reed said he’s not sure he’ll ever be OK and he’s not sure he’ll continue his work as a paramedic. He thinks maybe he’ll be a counselor one day.

“Who I was before April 17 has died,” he said. “I have to figure out who I am again.”

To post a comment, log into your chosen social network and then add your comment below. Your comments are subject to our Terms of Service and the privacy policy and terms of service of your social network. If you do not want to comment with a social network, please consider writing a letter to the editor.